Dip-Coating Fabrication of All-Polymer Multilayer Photonic Crystals through 3D Printer Conversion

Abstract

Dip-coating plays a crucial role in the production of polymer thin films and coatings on both laboratory and industrial scales. The simplicity of the process, combined with its adaptability and precision, makes it an invaluable technique for achieving consistent and reproducible coatings, which can also be suitable for photonics applications. As a cheaper, more flexible alternative to commercial dip-coaters, we report on the conversion of a commercial 3D printer designed for fused deposition modeling into a dip-coating system for fabricating multilayered photonic crystals. The feasibility of this approach is demonstrated by fabricating both distributed Bragg reflectors and a fluorescence planar microcavity. We used a perfluorinated polymer formulation and poly(N-vinylcarbazole) as structural dielectric media, alongside a recycled blend of fluorescent polystyrene as a light emitter for the microcavity. In both cases, precise control of the deposition parameters enables the formation of uniform photonic nanostructures, leading to a spectral redistribution of fluorescence comparable to that achieved by standard spin-coated photonic crystals. This approach paves the way toward automating the fabrication of planar photonic structures on a laboratory scale, with the potential to scale up to larger surface areas compared to those obtained by standard methods.